MOBILE DIGITAL LIBRARY - SOCIETY OF YOUNG NIGERIAN ...

is not company for the one! I make tracks! I am gone!"How far Consuelo entirely believed and trusted her ingenious brother I do not know, noreven then cared to inquire. For there was a pretty mantling of her olive cheek, as I cameforward with my offering, and a certain significant shyness in her manner that wereenough to throw me into a state of hopeless imbecility. And I was always miserablyconscious that Consuelo possessed an exalted sentimentality, and a predilection for thehighest mediæval romance, in which I knew I was lamentably deficient. Even in our mostconfidential moments I was always aware that I weakly lagged behind this daughter of agloomily distinguished ancestry, in her frequent incursions into a vague but poetic past.There was something of the dignity of the Spanish châtelaine[157-1] in the sweetly gravelittle figure that advanced to accept my specious offering. I think I should have fallen onmy knees to present it, but for the presence of the all seeing Enriquez. But why did I evenat that moment remember that he had early bestowed upon her the nickname of"Pomposa"? This, as Enriquez himself might have observed, was "sad and strange."I managed to stammer out something about the Madroño berries being at her"disposition" (the tree was in her own garden!), and she took the branches in her littlebrown hand with a soft response to my unutterable glances.But here Chu Chu, momentarily forgotten, executed a happy diversion. To ourastonishment she gravely walked up to Consuelo and, stretching out her long slim neck,